Stressor
by Flash Foreward
Summary: I needed to know why he did it, but my letter received a rather vague response. When I went to visit him, it wasn't anything he said that answered my questions but what I saw in his eyes. Ryan's POV, sequel to "Vigilante", slight Ryan/Eric


**A/N:** Sequel to "Vigilante"

**Disclaimer:** I don't own CSI Miami.

**Stressor**

They started a few months after his arrest, the nightmares. I would wake up in a cold sweat from images of mutilated bodies lying before him on red grass, and the suddenness of my awakening would wake Eric as well, and make him worry. I always insisted I was fine, and urged him to go back to sleep, and when he finally did I would slip out of bed and sneak out of the room to clean up our apartment. It kept me calm, helped me think.

I wrote the letter three weeks after the nightmares started, and sent it out after another long week of mental debating. I knew that in order to sleep I would need an answer to my questions, and that he was the only one who could give those answers to me. So I sent it to the prison and waited impatiently and sleeplessly for his response.

The day it came, Eric was the one to get the mail. He walked in, staring down at the envelope, and stood in front of me where I sat on the couch.

"When did you write to him?" he asked, still staring at the envelope.

"What?" I countered, he turned his gaze on me and I sighed. "A few weeks ago," I said. He nodded and said nothing else, just handed the letter to me. I opened it, expecting enlightenment. What I found was one line written on a small piece of paper:

_Visiting hours._

Not even a personalization or a signature, just those two words staring up at me. But those three words served to feed my nightmares, giving them strength as the haunted my nights.

So, I found out when visiting hours were and I went to see him. The night before, I was more restless than usual. I couldn't even fall asleep to have a nightmare wake me up, and Eric did nothing to hide his worry.

"Are you sure about this?" he asked. I didn't answer except to nod, keeping my gaze on our bedroom door. I knew that if I looked at him I would cave. I would ask him to go with more or even just change my mind entirely, and I couldn't do that.

I had to speak to _him_, and I had to do it alone.

So, I went.

He was sitting behind glass, a telephone connecting us. He picked his receiver up as I sat down, and I brought my own to my ear.

"Mr. Wolfe," he said with a nod, his voice no different than it had ever been. I nodded to him, and he continued as though we were speaking in his office. "How is the lab?" I shrugged.

"Doing all right," I replied. "Calleigh's our supervisor now." He nodded.

"That makes sense," he said. "She's a very dedicated CSI." I swallowed, staring into his eyes. They looked so normal, and he acted as though everything was. As though he wasn't in jail for life…for murder.

"But, you didn't come here to discuss work," he finally said, and I shook my head. I cleared my throat and looked down at the rough counter-top in front of him.

"Why?" I asked, my voice weak and nearly a whisper. The corners of his mouth turned up in that half-smile I was so used to, and I couldn't help but imagine him standing over a body, his sunglasses in hand, ready to do anything and everything to ensure that justice was served.

"Do you know what a stressor is, Mr. Wolfe?" he asked. I stared at him and nodded. Of course I knew what a stressor was, I was a CSI. "What is it, Mr. Wolfe?" I raised an eyebrow in confusion, wondering why he was asking me something he knew, but I answered.

"It's an event that creates a sense of threat," I explained. "Usually prompting a person to react strongly and often causing a borderline criminal to act on his or her fantasies." He nodded.

"Very detailed, Mr. Wolfe," he said. "And correct." I nodded, but he said nothing more. I waited, and the silence dragged on. I was about to go, thinking I'd wasted my time, when he caught my eye and spoke again.

"Do you know how long I've been a police officer?" he asked. "Not just a CSI, but a police officer in general." I shook my head and he sighed. "A long time, Mr. Wolfe. And I've seen a lot of pain." I nodded.

"We all have," I said. "That doesn't give us the right…," I trailed off at the look in his eyes. I had been sitting there the entire time thinking everything was normal, but when I looked more closely at his eyes I saw that things had changed more than I thought. There was a darkness there, glaring out at me. Something had snapped in him and we had all missed it.

"Right?" he asked after a few moments of silence. "What about them?" he gestured vaguely behind him. "What _right_ do they have?" I swallowed as the darkness in his eyes spread across is face. "I was ending it," he said softly, "fixing it."

He kept speaking, going on and on about how he was helping bring society back to where it should have been, but I wasn't really listening. I was staring at him, at the darkness that had first prompted him to become a cop. His darkness had turned on him, snapping something inside of him and causing him to switch teams.

And none of us would ever know what it was, because he could never tell us.

After I left, after I'd let him talk for a few more minutes, and as I was driving home, I found myself wondering what what had happened to him could mean for me. I had my own reasons for becoming a criminalist, my own darkness, and I began to worry that it would turn on me as his hand turned on him.

It wasn't until I was inside the apartment, met by Eric sitting on the couch with a bowl of chips, a beer, and a football game on, that I could start to calm down. I had an escape, something to come home to, to get my mind off of the pain we saw.

And as I retrieved my own beer, sat down next to Eric and kissed him lightly on the lips, I wondered if maybe I had found the beginning. If maybe Marisol's death had started it, and maybe it had been a downward spiral until his darkness finally had complete control.

That thought, that idea, prompted me to make a vow: I would fight _my_ darkness, no matter what happened.


End file.
